Fikkert's Ferns-Updated

If you are part of the Tatting group on Facebook you might have seen that a couple of us are working on (read: struggling with) Ben Fikkert's pattern "Ferns" from his book "A Tatting Adventure". 

"Ferns" is the pattern shown on the front of the book and includes quite a few Josephine chains and is deceptively hard and incredibly inclined to pucker, curl and do everything but lay down and play nice!

Here is the doily 2/3 of the way finished:

And here is where I am now, not much further along (but still quite curly):

I am working on the final round of the doily (eight identical leafy inserts connecting the eight fern fronds) and having a bit of trouble. The other lady who is working this pattern has been having tension troubles  with the Josephine chains in the first stages of the doily (her theory is that is has to do with Mr. Fikkert tatting more loosely than she does). I didn't have that kind of problem in the early rounds, but I am definitely struggling with these final inserts! 

Those "rings" on the lower part of the insert aren't rings, they're part of the chain that is apparently too long for the space it is in. And before you ask, yes, I did actually follow he pattern. I checked. Twice. 

So I'm not sure what's going on here, but I'm going to shorten the chain a bit and see if that fixes the issue...

And hopefully it does because, frankly, I'm ready to move on from the Ferns! :)

UPDATE!

Check out the insert on the far left... Hel-lo success! :)